A few days ago I went to a christening to make vows on behalf of the
offspring of a gallant young officer now at the front. I conceived that the
fitting thing on such an occasion was to wear a silk hat, and accordingly I
took out the article, warmed it before the fire, and rubbed it with a hat
pad until it was nice and shiny, put it on my head, and set out for the
church. But I soon regretted the choice. It had no support from any one
else present, and when later I got out of the Tube and walked down the
Strand I found that I was a conspicuous person, which, above all things, I
hate to be. My hat, I saw, was observed. Eyes were turned towards me with
that mild curiosity with which one remarks any innocent oddity or vanity of
the streets.
I became self-conscious and looked around for companionship, but as my eye
travelled along the crowded pavement I could see nothing but bowlers and
trilbys and occasional straws. "Ah, here at last," said I, "is one coming."
But a nearer view only completed my discomfiture, for it was one of those
greasy-shiny hats which go with frayed trousers and broken boots, and which
are the symbol of "better days," of hopes that are dead, and "drinks" that
dally, of a social status that has gone and of a suburban villa that has
shrunk to a cubicle in a Rowton lodging-house. I looked at greasy-hat and
greasy-hat looked at me, and in that momentary glance of fellowship we
agreed that we were "out of it."
I put my silk hat away at night with the firm resolution that nothing short
of an invitation to Buckingham Palace, or some similar incredible disaster,
should make me drag it into the light again. For the truth is that the war
has given the top-hat a knock-out blow. It had been tottering on our brows
for some time. There was a very hot summer a few years ago which began the
revolution. The tyranny of the top-hat became intolerable, and quite
"respectable" people began to be seen in the streets with Panamas and
straws. But these were only concessions to an irresponsible climate, and
the silk hat still held its ancient sway as the crown and glory of our City
civilisation. And now it has toppled down and is on the way, perhaps, to
becoming as much a thing of the past as wigs or knee-breeches. It is almost
as rare in the Strand as it is in Market Street, Manchester. Cabinet
Ministers and other sublime personages still wear it, coachmen still wear
it, and my friend greasy-hat still wears it; but for the rest of us it is a
splendour that is past, a memory of the world before the deluge.
It may be that it will revive. It would not be the first time that such a
result of a great catastrophe was found to be only temporary. I remember
that Pepys records in his Diary that one result of the Great Plague was
that the wig went out of fashion. People were afraid to wear wigs that
might be made of the hair of those who had died of infection. But the wig
returned again for more than a century, though you may remember that in
_The Rivals_ there is an early hint of its final disappearance. There was
never probably a more crazy fashion, and, like most crazy fashions, it
began, as the "Alexandra limp" of our youth began, in snobbery. Was it not
a fact that a bald-headed King wore a wig to conceal his baldness, which
set all the flunkey-world wearing wigs to conceal their hair? This aping of
the great is always converting some defect or folly into a virtue. When
Lady Percy in _Henry IV._ is lamenting Hotspur she says:--
... he was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs that practised not his gait;
And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant;
For those that could speak low and tardily,
Would turn their own perfection to abuse.
To seem like him.
In the case of the top-hat the disappearance is due to the psychology of
the war. The great tragedy has brought us down to the bed-rock of things
and has made us feel somehow that ornament is out of place, and that the
top-hat is a falsity in a world that has become a battlefield. I don't
think women have shared this feeling to the same extent. I am told there
were never so many sealskin coats to be seen as during last winter. But,
perhaps, the women will say that men have been only too glad to use the war
as an excuse for getting rid of an incubus. And they may be right. We had
better not make too great a virtue of what is, after all, a comfortable
change. Let us enjoy it without boasting.
Our enjoyment may be short-lived. We must not be surprised if this
incredible hat returns in triumph with peace. It has survived the blasts of
many centuries and infinite changes of fashion. It is, I suppose, the most
ancient survival in the dress that men wear. There is in the Froissart
collection at the British Museum an illumination (dating from the fifteenth
century) showing the expedition of the French and English against the
Barbary corsairs. And there seated in the boats are men clad in armour.
They have put their helmets aside and are wearing top-hats! And it may be
that when Macaulay's New Zealander, centuries hence, takes his seat on that
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, he will sit
under the shelter of a top-hat that has out-lasted all our greatness.
There must be some virtue in a thing that is so immortal. If the doctrine
of the survival of the fittest applies to dress, it is the fittest thing we
have. Trousers are a thing of yesterday with us, but our top-hat carries us
back to the Wars of the Roses and beyond. It is not its beauty that
explains it. I have never heard any one deny that it is ugly, though custom
may have blunted our sense of its ugliness. It is not its utility. I have
never heard any one claim that this strange cylinder had that quality. It
is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind
and ruined by a shower of rain. It needs as much attention as a peevish
child or a pet dog. It is not even cheap, and when it is disreputable it is
the most disreputable thing on earth. What is the mystery of its strange
persistence? Is it simply a habit that we cannot throw off or is there a
certain snobbishness about it that appeals to the flunkeyism of men? That
is perhaps the explanation. That is perhaps why it has disappeared when
snobbishness is felt to be inconsistent with the world of stern realities
and bitter sorrows in which we live. We are humble and serious and out of
humour with the pretentious vanity of our top-hat.